Blackburn Rovers are in familiar territory facing an FA Cup replay against one of the country's best, only this time it's Liverpool and not Manchester City.

Last season, the Championship side held eventual Premier League champions City to a draw, but were then thrashed 5-0 in the return. None-the-less, midfielder Tom Cairney didn't come away from the game empty handed and grabbed Yaya Toure's shirt at the end, which takes pride of place framed in his living room.

'I don't know what he did with mine, I think he needed something to clean his car with!' Cairney jokes, hoping that there will not be a repeat when they host Liverpool on Wednesday in their FA Cup quarter-final replay. 'When we went to Anfield in the last match we were scared of failing and scared of getting hammered. That's part of what makes you dig even deeper against those sides.'

Raheem Sterling's contract negotiations have dominated the headlines in the past fortnight

Tom Cairney, who will face Sterling on Wednesday night, has sympathy for the young winger

Blackburn manager Gary Bowyer and his players are also hoping the Liverpool players' studs will sink a little further into the Ewood Park turf, currently in a sorry state, to help their cause. 'Against Brighton in our last game there you had to take three touches to control the ball,' Cairney explains. 'Personally, it's not what I like, but if it takes Philippe Coutinho a few extra seconds to control the ball then I will be happy with that.'

It does not suit Cairney, 24, who is a ball-playing central midfielder with a sweet left foot. But he is also not afraid to get stuck in, learned when he had a taste of the top flight as a teenager at Hull City when Phil Brown threw him in as the club were heading down.

Since then, after moving to Blackburn, on loan first and permanently last summer, he would kill for a chance to get back there. One might expect him, then, to be incredulous that Liverpool's Raheem Sterling is turning down contracts worth £100,000-per-week but Cairney feels sympathy instead.

'I know it sounds stupid more than one hundred grand a week but that's the world we live in and that's football,' he says. 'It's up to him. If he stays at Liverpool he will be one of the top players for the next eight years.

'He might be thinking the top dog at Liverpool is on a lot more and he feels he's doing a job just as well. To turn down one hundred grand a week in our world is crazy but he's in the top three 20-year-olds in the world.'

Sterling shares a laugh in training ahead of Liverpool's FA Cup replay with Blackburn on Wednesday

Sterling has been linked with a move to Arsenal, admitting he was 'flattered' by their interest

Part of Sterling's issue is that boss Brendan Rodgers sometimes plays him as a wing-back instead of up front, where the player prefers. 'I was pleased when he played wing-back against us in the first match,' Cairney adds. 'He was out of the way a little bit.'

Cairney has his own taste of superstardom, too, if only around Blackburn's Brockhall Training Ground where he goes by the nickname of 'Justin Bieber.' When he first joined the club, the other players dug up pictures that revealed his uncanny resemblance to the Canadian pop star.

'It was on my old Facebook. I had a basketball vest on and shades and a cap backwards,' Cairney says. 'I didn't have any stubble because I can't grow it so they thought I looked a bit like Bieber.

'He's not bad with the ladies is he? And I like a few of his songs so it could have been worse.'

Cairney and Sterling — and Bieber, come to that -— were not born the last time, before this season, Blackburn met Liverpool in an FA Cup quarter-final. That was in 1958 when Ron Clayton and Ally MacLeod scored late on for Blackburn to overturn Bobby Murdoch's early Liverpool goal.

Yet Cairney's upbringing was rich in the competition due to his father Ian. 'He used to go on about the FA Cup all the time when I was little,' Cairney says.

Blackburn were hammered by Edin Dzeko (centre) and Co in a FA Cup replay last season

'Some people don't see it as big as they used to in the olden days. But the FA Cup is one of the most famous competitions in world football. To play in a semi-final at Wembley would be a dream.

'He'd go on about Hereford beating Newcastle 2-1 in 1972, those types of games. I'd say right, dad, bore me later, but he is right. The underdog playing the favourites, anything can happen. We've shown that this season.

'He can't believe I'm playing in an FA Cup quarter-final. He used to play four or five rounds before the Third Round and think it was good.

'If you spoke to him you'd think he was Maradona. He played local. To be fair, he has a good touch. He played for non-League around Nottingham.

'He sometimes tells me things and I'm like dad, shut up, you were playing against drunken keepers on Sunday mornings.'

A Wembley day out against Aston Villa welcomes the winner. If Cairney and Co make it, his father will have another FA Cup upset to go on about.